This woman from Sudbury, Ont. turns to GoFundMe to cover expenses following a kidney transplant

Since early childhood, Renée Pelletier has been travelling from her home in Sudbury, Ont., to hospitals in southern Ontario for treatment.

At two she was diagnosed with kidney disease, and at the age of nine she had her first kidney transplant.

“That lasted about nine to 10 years and then it failed and so we started dialysis,” she said.

Now at 25, Pelletier is recovering from her second kidney transplant.

Because the Health Sciences North hospital in Sudbury doesn’t conduct organ transplants Pelletier has had to travel frequently to southern Ontario. 

When she was a child, it was mostly to Toronto’s SickKids hospital. More recently, she has been travelling to the London Health Sciences Centre.

“They have the best source of communication with Sudbury,” she said.

“So it saves me a little bit of travel and we could do conference calls, or the doc goes to Sudbury.”

But even with ways to cut back on travel, she has had to spend a lot of time in London, especially following her surgery. And the associated costs add up.

“I’ve got to be in London for a month. So adding all those costs up gets costly. Over $4,000,” she said.

Pelletier works as a cashier at Gateway Casinos in Sudbury, and is unable to work when she’s traveling for medical care,

To help cover her daily expenses, and the cost of travel, her sister started a GoFundMe campaign in her name. As of Oct. 1, the campaign had raised $4,295. 

“It’s such an amazing program because you’re able to share it over like your Facebook and then other people share it and it just gets around so fast. So many people are very generous and willing to help,” she said.

In addition to her GoFundMe campaign, Pelletier said she’s also relied on the provincial government’s Northern Health Travel Grant, which provides some reimbursements from the province for travel and hotel expenses. 

Currently, the grant gives successful applicants $175 per night for hotel stays, topping out at $1,150 for a stay of eight days or more. The gas allowance is $0.41 per kilometre.

Despite a recent increase to the allowance — it was $100 per day for accommodations before Dec. 1, 2024 — Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas, the NDP’s health critic, says the grant hasn’t kept up with inflation.

“It looks like a lot of money, but try to find a hotel close to a big hospital in Toronto for $175. It is impossible,” she said.

Gélinas added the grant doesn’t cover the high fees for parking at hospitals in Toronto and elsewhere in southern Ontario. 

She said no one should need to turn to GoFundMe campaigns to help them cover the costs associated with medical travel.

“Equity of access to health care is a responsibility of the provincial government,” Gélinas said. 

“Why is it that people in northern Ontario will choose to go without treatment rather than bring their family into debt? This is not right. This is not equitable.”

In an email to CBC News, Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones’s press secretary Ema Propovic said the Northern Health Travel Grant supports more than 66,000 people every year.

“Last year, we announced we are investing an additional $45 million in the NHTG (Northern Health Travel Grant) to expand and improve services, such as increasing reimbursement amounts and simplifying the application and submission form,” the email said.

In addition to the grant, there are charitable organizations like Hope Air that help Canadians in rural areas travel to their medical appointments.

Hope Air covers all of the costs associated with air travel and accommodations for patients who have to travel to larger urban centres for their medical appointments.

The organization also co-ordinates all of the booking and scheduling for medical travel. 

But CEO Mark Rubinstein told CBC News that Ontario is the only province that doesn’t partner with Hope Air to fund the service.

Rubinstein said Hope Air helps 1,200 Ontario patients, and their escorts, get to medical appointments every year.

“We know the demand, with appropriate funding, would probably rise to triple or four-times what the current volume is [in Ontario],” he said.

Rubinstein said the Northern Health Travel Grant is great for middle-income families who can afford to travel, but benefit from partial reimbursements on those costs.

However, he said Hope Air exists for low-income patients who would go without medical care if they couldn’t get financial support.

“For people who are on the margins, you can easily understand why, faced with those challenges, two things could happen: one is you push families into poverty,” Rubinstein said.

“Or the alternative is that people cancel their appointments. And that happens on a regular basis because of cost.”